Import the unitypackage (you can double-click on it and Unity will open it).

Go to the Spine Examples\Getting Started folder in the Project panel. Open and examine those Unity Scene files in order. Make sure you read the text in the scene, check out the inspector and open the relevant sample scripts.

Spine-Unity works in Unity without the need for any other plugins. But it also works with 2D Toolkit and can render skeletons using TK2D's texture atlas system. To enable this, open Unity's Preferences... and under the Spine tab, you can enable TK2D.

If you are not familiar with programming in C# and using Unity in general, we recommend watching the official Unity Tutorials first. The Interface Essentials and then Scripting topics are a good place to start. Their Animation topic is not directly applicable to Spine-Unity so there's no need to learn that to know how to use Spine-Unity.

On the lower-right, look for the textbox labeled Atlas extension and make sure it is set to .atlas.txt. (This is to work around Unity not accepting file extensions it doesn't recognize despite being plain text, but the Spine-Unity runtime can actually handle auto-renaming .atlas files. However, setting it to .atlas.txt minimizes problems and ambiguities with subsequent exports.)

In the Export window, pick an output folder. (Recommendation: Make a new empty folder. Make sure you can find it.)

Click Export.

This will export three files:

a .json file that holds data of the skeleton.

a .png file which is the packed version of all your images in one texture.

a .atlas.txt file (libGDX atlas) that has data of where each image is in the packed texture.

For more information on ideal export settings, see the Export Settings documentation.

For 2D Toolkit users, Step 3 (packing a .png and .atlas.txt) is not necessary. Instead, you will have the appropriate field in your SkeletonDataAsset to assign a reference to tk2dSpriteCollectionData. To enable this, open Unity's Preferences... and under the Spine tab, you can enable TK2D.

If you are using any other shader, make sure your texture packer settings match accordingly.

Older versions of Spine-Unity did not do drag-and-drop instantiation. If you have an older version, right-click on the _SkeletonData asset and choose Spine > Instantiate (SkeletonAnimation). This will instantiate a new Spine GameObject.

Due to a limitation in Unity Editor APIs, dragging the asset into an empty hierarchy panel will not work. In this case, just drag the asset into Scene View.

TEXTURE SIZES. Unity scales overly large images down by default. The Spine-Unity runtime automatically sets atlas maximum sizes to 2048x2048. If your textures are larger than this, it will cause atlas coordinates to be incorrect. Make sure the import settings are set appropriately, or decrease the maximum page width and height in your Spine Texture Packer settings.

TEXTURE ARTIFACTS FROM COMPRESSION. Unity's 2D project defaults import new images added to the project with the Texture Type "Sprite". This can cause artifacts when using the Spine/Skeleton shader. To avoid these artifacts, make sure the Texture Type is set to "Texture" and . Spine-Unity's automatic import will attempt to apply these settings but in the process of updating your textures, these settings may be reverted.

If you want to use Skeleton Binary files, choose Binary instead of JSON on the upper left of the Spine Export window when exporting.

EXTENSION: Make sure the Extension is set to .skel.bytes. Otherwise, Unity will not recognize it as a binary file and Spine-Unity can't read it.

All the steps mentioned above that apply to .json also apply to .skel.bytes. Spine-Unity will automatically recognize it and ingest it into "_SkeletonData".

While the Spine Skeleton Binary format offers loading time improvements, the format is less stable across feature-update versions of the runtime. It's best to have a batch setup ready if you intend to update your runtime. For more info on command line exports, see: http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-export#Command-line

Major Spine editor updates require that you update your Spine-Unity runtime so it reads and interprets exported Spine data correctly.

As with Unity updates, it is always recommended that you back up your whole Unity project before performing an update.

Always check with your Lead Programmer and Technical Artist, and art/animation team before updating your Spine runtime. Spine runtimes are source-available and designed to be user-modifiable based on varying project needs. Your project's spine runtime may have been modified by your programmer. In this case, updating to the latest runtime also requires reapplying those modifications to the new version of the runtime.

You have three options for updating your Spine-Unity runtime. An in-place update with Unity's Import Package dialog is the recommended option. In rare, complicated cases, you may have to delete your older version of spine-unity and then import the unitypackage.

skeletonAnimation.AnimationState.SetAnimation(0, "run", true);// The first parameter is the track number. You can have many animations playing on top of one another on different tracks at the same time.// The second parameter is the animation name. For optimization stages, non-string API also exists.// The third parameter is for making your animation loop.}

For more sample code, the Spine-Unity unitypackage comes with a set of sample scenes and scripts. Once you have imported the latest unitypackage, find the Spine Examples\Getting Started folder in the Project panel.

Open and examine those Unity Scene files in order. Make sure you read the text in the scene, check out the inspector and open the relevant sample scripts.

Those will cover the basics of playing animations and posing characters.